


Darlin’, Now You’re Adrift in the Deep

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Slice of Life, Through the Years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 14:50:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4709933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...So just lay down your head, and I'll sing you to sleep." </p><p>For coltdancer, who requested Kanan having a headache and Hera taking care of him. </p><p>Three scoops of hurt/comfort in a heavy fluff sauce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darlin’, Now You’re Adrift in the Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ColtDancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColtDancer/gifts).



1)  Mid-afternoon looks like every other time of day when they’re not planet-side, but that doldrums feeling hits them, just the same. Mid-afternoon. Such a long day, already.

“Did you finish replacing the wiring on the dataport for the shields?”

Kanan sits behind a green and blue map at the copilot’s station. In its glow, he frowns in concentration. She gets a noncommittal “Hmm” in response and knows better than to interrupt him again. The starboard panel doesn’t LOOK like it’s been moved, but maybe he’s just put it back already. 

So she calls up her own display—possible routes around the asteroid field between here and Dantooine. (Through would be so much faster, but that’s frustratingly out of the question.) But she can’t keep her head on the work because they really need Chopper to be able to patch into the shields from the cockpit. And that wiring fried last night. 

“Kanan?” No response at all. She pokes him in the shoulder. “The wiring?”

That finally gets his attention. “What wiring?” He’s not quite snapping at her, but it’s close enough that she stops feeling badly about nagging.

“The shield system. Did you replace the wiring?” 

“I already did that.” 

 _Really_? she doesn’t say.  _Because it doesn’t look like anyone’s been in that panel._  And:  _Do you need to yell at me for asking?_  she doesn’t say. _It’s kind of important that I know. So that we don’t end up dead._  She doesn’t say these things, but she takes a second too long to look at him after that tone of voice.

“I  _did_  it, Hera. I’m working on ground plans.”

“Okay.” Making peace. 

“Things might go a little better if you didn’t nag me about it.” 

She says nothing. 

“I’m sorry for yelling, all right?” 

He still sounds irritated, but irritated at himself. The mood isn’t like Kanan. For all of his feigned boyishness, he is usually so controlled. She’s missing something. There’s something in his face that she should be seeing…

Aha! There. That line right between his eyebrows. “Kanan, what hurts?” 

He looks surprised at the question.The wiring hadn’t gone at the best of times, of course. Nothing ever did. It had blown at the beginning of what should have been a dog fight, and he’d tried to fix it with her flying evasive and yelling at Chopper to  _get the coordinates, we can’t take any more hits like this_. Then she’d gone a little too far port and the laser grazed them. He’d taken a shock through the wiring, sat up quickly, whacked his head. It was one of those time-slowed-down moments that made Hera think  _Oh my goddess, he’s going to need immediate medical attention._  And then he sat up and was FINE—shook it off—and they’d thought no more of it. She has forgotten to worry until just now. 

And judging from his expression, he doesn’t have any idea what hurts. He’s just grumpy. Grumpy with a crease in the middle of his forehead.

He thinks about it. Slowly, as if learning something about himself. “…My head.”

She frowns, worried. “Do you think it’s a concussion?”

“No, it just HURTS.”

He scowls, and she hurts for him. She can’t do that Jedi thing he does. She can’t put her hands to the back of his neck and erase all the minor aches and pains. She tries anyway, taking off the gloves and smoothing her hands down the sides of his neck. “Is it stiff, or still ringing from yesterday, or…? Oh, wow. Your neck’s like a vise.” This she’s dealt with on her own more than enough times, sitting too long in the pilot’s chair staring straight ahead. She knows how to space her fingers out and dig them into the muscles of his neck, not hard enough to hurt, just looking for the right pressure point to start loosening things up. 

He tenses.

“Am I hurting?”

“No.” Succinct.

“Do you want me to stop?”

Quiet. “No.”

So she keeps going, trying to help, but those muscles just get more and more knotted. “Kanan, I’m not helping at all. Why don’t you just take a pill and lie down? All of this work will still be here later. I’m sorry.” 

“Not your fault,” he says, still looking at the display. “I just can’t untense…” he swallows, and she has the sense that he’s swallowed whatever he was going to say.

Watching that lump in his throat bob, she realizes what the end of the sentence was.  _I just can’t untense when you’re touching me._

He’s holding very still and she swallows her own guilt and embarrassment, retreating to the pilot’s seat, pulling her gloves back on. He has made his position on this issue—his feelings for her—very clear. So has she. He’s always the gentleman, so it’s easy enough to agree to disagree. But occasionally something like this happens, and it’s awkward, and she’s always left feeling oddly guilty.

So she treats it like a medical situation, reaching for the bottle of pain medication she keeps in the cockpit for a long flight.“Here. I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head, wincing. “Don’t be sorry. I hate it when you do that.” 

“All right. Let me take this shift, then. Go lie down.” 

He shakes his head again, frowns. His stubborn face. 

“Kanan, I’m going to be up here anyway, and you’re just going to sit and act crabby. Go get better.”

He knows she’s right, but that stubborn frown doesn’t disappear. “Fine.” 

Later, she double-checks the wiring. Kanan is capable and he’s never failed her yet, but there hasn’t been a lot of ‘yet’ to judge from, and people are certainly less reliable about the routine things. 

The wiring is patched so perfectly she can’t tell it’s ever been spliced

 

…

 

2) She wakes because something is bumping her in the forehead. For a moment she doesn’t know where she is, sitting in a chair, bent over a strange bed. Her mouth tastes funny. She’s been asleep for a while. 

Kanan is still flat on his back, tubes in every visible orifice, but his eyes are open and he’s smiling at her. “You’ve got a line across your face,” he says, raspy.

“You’ve got a tube in your nose,” she returns. “How are you feeling?” 

He nudges her arm again with his foot, and she realizes what woke her. “My legs are killing me.” 

The feeling is so big she doesn’t know whether it’s a good one or a bad one. “Kanan—that’s great! That’s—” 

Relief hits her hard in the chest, and with it the realization of everything they’ve been carrying for the past week. She swallows against it hard, almost loses. He can see it. “Hey—Hey. Come here. It’s okay. You look like you need a break.” 

“ _I_  look like..! You must… Here, let me get you some water.” There’s a carafe next to the bed. She pours, but she can’t find the bed control to raise his head. She ends up slipping her arm beneath his shoulders and so, so carefully, raising him just enough that he can take a sip. He’s heavy. She spills a little. It must be cold, but his eyes smile at her. 

Smiling around strain. “Kanan, what hurts?” 

“Everything,” he admits.

“I need to call the doctor in here. It’s… not urgent, but he’ll want to check your reflexes when the anesthesia wears off. Although I don’t think he expected so much recovery already. I guess we can thank the Force for that.”

He’s still watching her. “Don’t call him yet. Lie down with me for a minute.”

“No, love. I don’t think there’s room. And I don’t want to jostle you around…”

She’s right, and he can see it. “Just come up here, then.” 

“All right.”

His face is still etched with pain. She shouldn’t really move him much, but she can’t keep from trying to help, at least a little. Fingers in his hair, feeling for his temples. Knead until it’s smooth. Gently, he’s hurt. Then up, across the top of his head. Kanan’s body has learned to disguise itself, to seem relaxed and jaunty even when he’s hurting. This is where he carries all his stress. Down around the sides of his head, to the back of the neck. It doesn’t seem to be hurting him…He lets out a heavy breath in relief. “Feels good.” 

“We can get you some actual pain medication, you know.” 

“Don’t want pain medication. I want you.”

His eyes are closed. She can study him in relative privacy. Face too long, nose absurdly crooked, small lines beginning to form at the corners of his eyes. It comes to her with the clearness of epiphany that she loves him, that he still and always loves her, that any worries getting in the way have been stupid and petty. 

“Hera.” 

“Yes?” 

“Just wanted to say it.” 

She smiles, leans in close to his ear, smells the neutral scent of his skin. Not really a smell. Pheromones, probably.  “Kanan.”

 

…

 

3) “Ezra!” Kanan comes up the ramp shouting. 

Ezra’s manning the cockpit, so Hera meets them instead, Zeb half-pushing him up the ramp, Kanan streaming blood from his head. His head bleeds a lot, she tells herself. No reason to panic. 

“Do we need to take off?” she asks. 

“No, we weren’t followed.” Zeb is confident. End of story, then. 

Kanan takes a break from being injured to wonder at her, “Why are you up?”

She’s getting a towel, though—something clean, that takes a little longer to find in this part of the ship—then pressing it against his head and leading him to the triangular-shaped medical bay that they keep claiming will become just another engineering bay someday soon. “You’re going to make it in there? Just the head? Zeb, what happened? Stormtroopers?”

“Nah, that’s a rare find these days. Just some thugs.” 

“Kanan Jarrus,” she tsks at him, “Some thugs did this?” 

“It was a lot of thugs!”

“Hundreds,” Zeb confirms, eyes wide and innocent. “And a giant octopus.”

Kanan frowns. “Stop helping.” 

“Sit.” Hera taps his shoulder and he drops obediently to the long bench. She risks a peek under the towel. Still bleeding, but slowing. “This is going to need stitches or bacta, one.”

Zeb lurks in the doorway. “You go back to bed. I’ll do it.”

“No offense, but your fingers are huge. This is Kanan’s face we’re talking about.” 

“Yeah, that’s precious to her,” Kanan grins. “She wants someone to do delicate work.”  

“You’re obviously not too badly hurt.” Not followed. Local thugs. What are the chances they’ve gone looking for trouble, just a little, missing the old days when trouble always found them?  

“Hera, you’re sure you’ve got this?”

She waves Zeb away without turning to look. “Go tell Ezra what happened. Make sure you weren’t followed.” 

“That’ll be a joy,” he mutters.

Hera hides a smirk. Kanan, possessed of a different instinct, reaches for her hand.

“All right, taking off! Save it until I leave, at least.” 

“Thanks, buddy.” Kanan grins at him. 

Zeb snorts. “For the help or for taking off? Ah, nevermind.” And then he makes himself scarce.

Hera removes the towel gingerly. Yes, the bleeding has stopped enough to do without it. A little numbing agent, something to clean it…“You all right?” he asks. 

“If I’m up, I’m all right.” Or at least near enough. She bites back annoyance at being treated like a glass ornament. Their eggshell-stepping is more or less justified. 

“When’s the last time you had something to drink?” Forget eating. 

“I had a little, earlier.” She examines the cut. A bacta patch won’t stick well there. Stitches, then?

Kanan pinches the skin on the top of her hand lightly, not hard enough to hurt. It stands up in a peak, dehydrated. “Liar.”

She doesn’t mean to smile at that, but she feels it on her face all the same. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll try, okay?” Time to deal with him, first. She turns on the lamp, and in full light she can see that the cut is sitting on a largeish purple goose egg. “Kanan, this looks bad. We might try the bacta after all. I don’t think I can put stitches in something that’s still swelling like that.”

“Whatever you think.”

Hera sticks the patch on as best she can, using a little extra to keep it in place. “What did they hit you with?” Ah, there was the miniature flashlight. Cut the lamp, again. Count to twenty in the semi-dark. 

“Some kind of pipe, I think.” 

“Ouch,” in sympathy. “I need to check your eyes, okay?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Can you believe this light actually has power cells in it? Here it comes, by the way.”  His right pupil contracts beautifully. His left stays dilated, and the muscles around his eyes wince at the sudden light. “Kanan, how hard did they hit? You’re concussed. Not just a little, either.”

“Pretty hard,” he admits. 

She watches his face. Okay, no more questions about what happened. Only the important ones. “It hurts?”

“Yeah.” 

“Dizzy and sick?”

His sheepish smile. Yes, then.

“You need to lie down.” 

“Was going to say the same thing about you.” 

“I know where they keep the bunks on this ship, it so happens.” 

“Drink first.” 

So she takes a sip of the water bottle she’s taken to carrying with her, then helps him stand and make his way to the bunks. Up the ladder, climbing behind him just in case. But he’s careful not to fall on her. Then down the corridor, his arm over her shoulder. He must really be hurting. 

Between the water (she’d known it was a bad idea) and his weight, she’s not feeling great either by the time they get there. Both collapse heavily on the bottom bunk. Kanan groans. His poor head. 

“Worse?” Hera asks.

“A little sick. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Well, I’m not in pain, too. Lift up. I’ll be fast.” A folded pillow slipped under his head. Lying on his back, face up. That was the best position for this sort of thing. “I think you’re all right to sleep if you want.” 

“Will you take it easy if I do?” 

She lies down next to him obligingly, winds her fingers into his hair from that position. Finds the back of his neck, right there at the base of his head. Arches her fingers like a mandolin player and works them into the muscles there. It’s an old tune, the tensions in his body born of injury. He groans in relief. “That’s nice.” 

“Can’t fix the concussion.” She works her way around to the other side, staying away from the bacta patch. 

“You make me feel better, though.”

That makes her smile. A kiss on his cheek. Taking a deep breath to quell the rebellion of her own stomach—leaning forward was also a bad idea.

“Wish I could help you,” he says quietly, guilty. 

She shrugs. “A few more months. It should get better.” 

“Hera, you’re not going to make it a few more days throwing up like this.” 

“We have plenty of IV bags in the med bay.” 

“Okay, but that’s miserable.”

She shrugs again. It is, in fact, miserable, and this temporary misery has taken a toll on even Kanan’s joy.  _Human hormones don’t mix well with Twi’lek physiology,_ the healer had said. _Even half-human hormones. You’re going to be very sick for a while. Then you’ll be fine._

Meanwhile, Hera is going stir-crazy. “I just wish I could do something more useful,” she tells him.

The line of pain in the center of his forehead remains, but the muscles in his scalp are smoothing out now, the tension better, at least. 

“You are.” 

**Author's Note:**

> -Thanks to Lord Huron for the loan of a few lines from "Lullaby."  
> -The middle section is a follow-up to Chapter 7 of Close Only Counts. (That link is to the story on AO3.) Some of you guys wanted to see that part, I think? Here you go!   
> -If somebody’s just undergone major surgery, don’t prop them up and give them water, okay? There are nurses for that.   
> -I have mixed feelings about the last section. Just because… I don’t really KNOW what happens in their future. I haven’t written myself there yet. And obviously, we’re only one season into this show and anything could happen. (But I’m willing to put money on the Ghost’s crew all surviving.) And I don’t know that there would be a baby. This story would be just fine without, too, I think. I have conflicting headcanons. I’m conflicted, okay! But nauseated people trying to take care of nauseated people is just such a train wreck that, you know, this happened. Ever had food poisoning with a bunch of your college roommates?


End file.
